This, according to The Atlantic, is bad not just for the student’s education and future professional life, but also their mental health. The thought patterns which colleges are trying to encourage with their campaigns against microagressions are the very thought patterns which cause debilitating depression and anxiety: paranoia, catastrophic thinking, dichotomous thinking, mind-reading and so on.

Why are colleges attempting to turn young adults into quivering emotional wrecks?

The article attributes the movement to the helicopter parent syndrome. That might be the case, but I tend to notice how claiming victimhood is a great way to both silence opposing viewpoints without having to give a coherent argument. It reduces debate to making a show of being offended. It allows one to display moral rectitude by means of their exquisite sensitivity to the most rarefied of possible offensives. It has an added benefit of adding a bit of drama to otherwise boring, white, middle-class lives.

It is ultimately about social positioning, power, and underhanded bullying. If students who engage in this sort of behavior end up unemployable anxiety-riddled wrecks, good.